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- In your learning journal, post (a) an evaluation of your First Artifact conversation, and (b) an assessment of how well you met your learning goals for weeks 4 and 5.
- Artifacts are evaluated for accent, cultural appropriateness, and linguistic accuracy.
I just want to say, I find it so painful to listen to myself speak in a recording. Especially in another language. That aside, I felt that my first artifact was good. I had been meeting my language partner for about a week and a half already before I recorded it and my intro was something we were already working on together. That really helped my confidence during my recording of the first artifact. For every goal I have, we usually have a script she writes out for me and a recording she does for me too. Both of these extremely help in studying Korean because I'm both an auditory and visual learner. I know that I can improve greatly on being less awkward and more smooth with my Korean, but that just takes practice. I think my Korean accent is okay, sometimes it's still weird to speak certain sounds we don't use in English but for the most part, Suyeon corrects me when I'm really using a thick English accent. My learning goals for week 4 and 5 are being met really well. Suyeon is super amazing and she's really making sure that I'm on track with everything I want to learn and also reiterating what we're learning together. I also am trying my best to study every day with Korean. I do watch Korean shows daily to help me be immersed in the language somehow, even if that's not writing or speaking it. So far, I'm on track with everything I've been hoping to do and I think that I'll be able to continue strong in this fashion.
- Reflect on the presentations of your classmates.
I really enjoyed learning about different aspects of culture and language from the target languages my peers are learning. I think for me, I personally really loved the other Korean learners because it gave me a new insight into the Korean culture which I didn't think about or wasn't aware of. So it was really awesome to just become acquainted with it. I also thought it was really interesting that everyone kind of took different approaches to the presentation. Someone did a linguistic and historical approach, another a business one, ASL in general has little representation, and social approaches to what is visibly seen in a community. I thought that diversity in all our presentations was really awesome. I also really loved Taylor's presentation. I only ever remember learning the alphabet and never encountering ASL again. I think it's a wonderful thing she's learning and her presentation really shed light on a community I am not familiar with. I felt that all of us were really able to learn from each other about our target language's society and norms. It's always so interesting to learn and talk about differences we see in a non-Western point of view.
The presentation day in class was very eye-opening. I found it interesting to learn about so many cultures and their unique practices. The two presentations I found particularly intriguing were about Pakistani languages and South Korean plastic surgery.
I found it incredible that a country as relatively small as Pakistan has 26 different languages. I think it's admirable to try and learn as many of the languages as possible, so he is able to venture to different parts of the country and interact with the native people.
For the South Korean plastic surgery presentation, I found it most shocking that 20% of men are wearing make-up on a day-to-day basis. In our culture, it's not even a thought for a man to put on make-up before he leaves his house or apartment for the day. However, the video she showed of the man applying many different forms of make-up was shocking to me.
Overall, these presentations enlightened me on many different practices I didn't even know existed. It is my hope throughout the semester that I continue to learn more about these cultures that I don't often learn about in my other classes.
The cultural presentations were an eye opening experience. The knowledge I gained about South Korean cultural astounded me. This was because of the degree of disparity that is between South Korean and Pakistani culture. Just one example of this can be seen in how much emphasis South Koreans placed on physical beauty. It was not considered uncommon for a man to invest both time and money so heavily on cosmetics and makeup. However, in Pakistani culture, it would be considered highly abnormal for a man to much such effort in to beautifying himself. I imagine one reason for this disparity might be the fact that Pakistani is a poor developing country. Citizens are barely making ends meet and do not have the financial resources to invest anywhere else. While on the other hand, South Koreans are a generally financially well off nation and have greater purchasing power.
Tasks for Week 4 and 5
For weeks 4 and 5, I was want to learn Siriaki’s number system. I understand that, much like most major languages of South Asia, Siriaki too has a pattern when it comes to counting. I intend to use my language partner is my primary resource as there is very little material available online. However, as I have recently discovered, there is considerable overlap between Siriaki and Sindhi. I intend to exploit it when I come a difficult situation.
I greatly enjoyed everyone's presentations and learning about the culture of other places. I especially enjoyed the presentations about Korea, mostly because I know very little about Korea. I never realized that plastic surgery was such a large aspect of Korean culture. It was interesting to learn that plastic surgery generally has a positive connotation and that most of it is focused on the face and not other parts of the body. I also never knew that there was such an emphasis on coupling and that there were so many holidays related to couples. I just kept thinking how hard it must be to keep up with all of those.
I also didn't know there were so many languages spoken in Pakistan. I always assumed there was one language that the whole country spoke, even though I didn't know what that language was. I really liked learning about how the languages are different, but still similar in some aspects, so if you learn one, you can start expanding outward and learn the others pretty easily.
The presentations actually made me realize how little I know about certain cultures and countries throughout the world. I really appreciated the opportunity to learn more, even if I never get the chance to visit any of these countries and see these cultural aspects for myself.
I really enjoyed everyone's presentations about their cultures during class. There were a few presentations on cultures I was not familiar with such as the deaf and Italian culture. This was interesting because I was able to expand my knowledge on factors I was familiar with. I particularly enjoyed the presentation on deaf culture, because I never realize to such an extent how expressive someone who is deaf might have to be with their facial expressions to get their point across. The video she showed really got the point across, and it was very enjoyable and informative.
In addition, because about half the class's target language is Korean, I was able to relate back to my personal experiences while living there, and also see how some things have changed over the past ten years. Learning more about things such as plastic surgery, and Korea's obsession with cosmetics was interesting, as I was able to expand my knowledge about their culture. I was even able to learn more about the Korean culture by doing my own presentation, as I was not aware to the extent of the couple culture in South Korea, and looking at all the anniversaries and holidays that couples keep up with was new information.
Based on the reading “Figuring Foreigners Out”, I did the exercise with one of my Korean friends. Koreans tend to be more collectivist. It means that they value harmony and the interdependence of group members. Group members always maintain close relationships both in psychological and emotional aspects. So Korean embrace the value that harmony, peace in a groups are much more important than reaching goals in conversations. This fact in Korean culture also directs me to consider the indirection communication cultures in Korean. People tend to imply rather than say things directly in order not to break the harmony. As a result, people under this culture are able to understand the implication without words. Then nonverbal communication such as body languages could be understandable intuitively among intimate Korean groups, which is interesting that how the linguistic aspects reflect the cultures.
In your learning journal, document (a) your goals and tasks for weeks 4 and 5, (b) the resources and activities you will use to achieve your goals, and (c) how you will evaluate your success.
(a) Here are my goals for the next two week and their tasks:
- Greetings and Farewells
Formal and informal greetings/ introducing myself (name, age, from, major)
be able to greet people and say goodbye to people formally and informally
introduce myself with my name, age major, hometown, school
(b) To achieve these goals, I plan to watch tutorial videos
practice with my language partner
practice with Korean learning beginners
take notes on my notebook
(c) I'll evaluate my success by
talking to my Korean friends before I learn and after I learn
- post artifacts on Ning
From the reading “How to understand the Deep structures of Language” , I learn that languages have their own constraints. When we study new languages, we need to be aware of the different structures among them. In our native language, we may default bias on our language structure. My target language, Korean, follows an order of subject, object, and verb that is in the end of a sentence, unlike English sentence structure that follows an order of subject, verb and object. I will ask my language partner to recommend a Korean language grammar book for me.
I think a reference grammar book can be useful, especially for language learners. We are able to get a sense of how our target languages work while we repeatedly check the grammar book. To be familiar with the structure of Korean might help us to read, speak and write accurately.
(Note: Resources I will use to learn Korean: I will learn from a website called How to Study Korean which contains a lesson on sentence word order (http://www.howtostudykorean.com/unit1/unit-1-lessons-1-8/unit-1-les...), and A Korean language learning book I bought for my home country "Let's Learn Korean". )
I think I have a fairly good background knowledge about the structure of Korean, such as where the elements of a sentence fit and other grammatical generalities. Verb endings are very important in Korean as they house what makes a sentence flow, such as giving the introduction to a clause and also conveying emotion. For example, phrases such as "because," "it turns out that," and "to be allowed to" are all housed in different verb endings, as opposed to being placed at the beginning of the sentence. In recognizing what is a verb ending, you also have to be very familiar with verb stems and how they're sometimes manipulated to account for adding on the verb ending.
There are few comprehensive lists of verb endings that I've seen. Some websites that teach Korean have lessons on verb endings, including some of the connotations that they have and example sentences. Those are useful for learning about one verb ending at a time, but not so much if you see an ending you don't know and you want to quickly look up the definition. For learning these endings, I think that the websites are extremely helpful. I could learn from them and then use them in conversations with my language partner to have more concrete practice with using them.
I think a reference grammar would be incredibly useful as there are many grammar points, measure words being the most "foreign" one I can think of, that are extremely abstract to an English speaker. Having a guide that gave more insight into how English speakers should approach Korean grammar, including helping get into the mindset of how to phrase sentences in Korean from English, would be very useful in my studies.
Goals for the semester:
Interpersonal Communication:
This is what I am most interested in this semester. I want to be able to hold a conversation with someone for a relatively long period of time and be able to talk about different topics, including music, books, religion, family, school, travel, etc…
Interpretive:
Listening:
Because ASL speakers only use their hands to speak, “listening” is really “seeing.” When I was learning Spanish, my teachers often spoke slower than normal, because we wouldn’t be able to catch all the words otherwise. The same principal applies to ASL. The people I am interacting with, specifically my language partner, will probably need to sign slower than normal so I will be able to see all the different signs.
Reading:
You can’t read ASL, so this does not apply.
Presentational:
Speaking:
I don’t think there is a high chance of there being a situation in which I would need to speak ASL in front of a group of people, but I would like to reach the level where I could do so, if needed. I want to be comfortable enough where I could speak for a few minutes by myself and just have other people watch.
Writing:
ASL is not a written language, so this does not apply either.
Because ASL is not a written or spoken language, everything that I learn will need to be documented with a video.
Tasks:
Greetings/Farewells: I can say “Hello” and “Goodbye”
Introducing yourself: I can say my name and spell the name of the town I am from.
I want to learn to ask questions (What is your name? Where are you from? Etc…) and answer them.
Identifying and talking about family members: I can say mother and father.
Telling time/asking the time
Asking/saying the date
Talking about school, college, fields of study, etc…
Talking about my home and petsI have two dogs and I really love them, so I would like to be able to talk about them and say what kind of dogs they are.
Talking about hobbies (music, books, outdoors)
People who are completely deaf cannot hear music, but many people who speak sign language can hear music (if they are not entirely deaf) and can even feel the bass of a song, if the music is loud enough. It would be difficult to have an in-depth discussion about music, but I would like to learn some signs that relate to music.
I also love to read novels, especially historical fiction and sci-fi, so I want to be able to talk about that.
Talking about religion
Talking about the past and future
How will I learn?
My language partner told me that many deaf people think in pictures. She told me that if you can “speak” using pictures the deaf will be able to understand you better.
There are a lot of great websites that are “dictionaries” of hundreds of ASL signs. The only way to really learn is to practice and use the language whenever I can.
a) Goals for Week 4:
Continue to learn everyday language and be able to ask questions, especially Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How?
Start learning more religious language. I know Jehovah, Jesus, Bible, and a few other names and that is all. I have discovered that some of the signs used in my religion are different than those that are used elsewhere. So the best way for me to figure out these differences is to ask my language partner, who is the same religion as me.
Goals for Week 5:
Start to learn about music. I haven't discussed this with my language partner yet, but it's something I want to bring up soon. It will be harder to talk about music with the deaf, but I also know ASL speakers who are hearing, so I will be able to sign with them.
b) I will continue to look up words online and just ask my language partner how to say things. We are planning on going to a store and walking around and she is going to point things out to me and tell me the sign OR ask me to guess the sign, as it is often moderately easy to guess signs, especially for objects.
My language partner sometimes attends "silent lunch" or "silent dinner," where the deaf and hearing gather together and have a meal together, but you are not allowed to use your voice at all. I am definitely not at that level yet, but I hope to attend sometime in the next few weeks, even if I know that there will be much that I will not understand.
c) I can evaluate my progress by having a conversation with someone who is not my language partner, whether hearing or deaf. I want others to be able to understand what I am signing without me having to use my voice at all. I also try to sign as much as I can during the day, whenever I know the sign for what I am saying. I still do not know much, but it is a good test for what I do know.
a) Goals for Week 4:
Continue to learn everyday language and be able to ask questions, especially Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How?
Start learning more religious language. I know Jehovah, Jesus, Bible, and a few other names and that is all. I have discovered that some of the signs used in my religion are different than those that are used elsewhere. So the best way for me to figure out these differences is to ask my language partner, who is the same religion as me.
Goals for Week 5:
Start to learn about music. I haven't discussed this with my language partner yet, but it's something I want to bring up soon. It will be harder to talk about music with the deaf, but I also know ASL speakers who are hearing, so I will be able to sign with them.
b) I will continue to look up words online and just ask my language partner how to say things. We are planning on going to a store and walking around and she is going to point things out to me and tell me the sign OR ask me to guess the sign, as it is often moderately easy to guess signs, especially for objects.
My language partner sometimes attends "silent lunch" or "silent dinner," where the deaf and hearing gather together and have a meal together, but you are not allowed to use your voice at all. I am definitely not at that level yet, but I hope to attend sometime in the next few weeks, even if I know that there will be much that I will not understand.
c) I can evaluate my progress by having a conversation with someone who is not my language partner, whether hearing or deaf. I want others to be able to understand what I am signing without me having to use my voice at all. I also try to sign as much as I can during the day, whenever I know the sign for what I am saying. I still do not know much, but it is a good test for what I do know.
I always thought that the grammar of American Sign Language would be similar to English, but it is not. This makes it difficult to talk and sign at the same time. The sentences use different structures and ASL does not use articles.
To demonstrate: In English, a sentence would be, "I need to go to the store." In ASL, you would sign, "I store need go." The verb always goes at the end of the sentence, instead of the beginning, which is much more common in English. This is why you rarely see people actually talking when their signing. They may mouth one or two words, but you will rarely see someone say an entire sentence (unless it's very short), because the word they would be saying would not match the word they were signing.
I don't want to say that a reference grammar would be completely useless in this situation, but I don't think it would be as useful as it would be for other languages. For me personally, I think it would be more useful to just practice the grammar while signing, instead of having it written out. Because ASL is not a written language, I think it would be harder to remember the rules by just looking at them on a sheet of paper. It would be useful, but I do not think it would be the best way to remember the grammar rules.
The best way to figure out the grammar rules for ASL is to just sign as much as possible. The deaf typically have no problem correcting you and they will let you know when you have signed something incorrectly or in the wrong order. My language partner has told me most of what I need to know about grammar, but I'm sure there are rules that have not come up yet.
- In your learning journal, document (a) your goals and tasks for weeks 4 and 5, (b) the resources and activities you will use to achieve your goals, and (c) how you will evaluate your success.
(a) My goals for the next two week with their tasks are as follows:
- Greetings and Farewells
Formal and informal greetings/ introducing myself (name, age, from, major)/ telephone call/ Asking others the same/class schedule
- Family and Relationships
Formal and informal/ learn the different family members/ professional titles (superiors)/ The 5 w's (who, what, when, where, why) Question words
(b) To achieve these goals, I plan to role play with my language partner, seek help from other Korean language learners, watch Youtube videos, use the Global Studio resources for Korean
(c) I'll evaluate my success from how easy it is for me to speak everything I'm learning. I feel that with enough practice, it should come more easily and flow better. It might not be perfect, but being fearless in learning a new language and making mistakes on the way is okay!
Here it is!
My final learning plan!
- What do you need to know about the structure of your target language? How will you acquire the knowledge you need? Do you think a reference grammar can be useful? Why or why not?
The structure of my target language (Korean), grammatically, is SOV. From the article, it reads that SOV languages usually have a case mark ending differentiating the subject from the object. For Korean, I'm not exactly sure what they use but I can look for that in the textbook resources from the Global Studio and from my language partner as well.
As I said, the Global Studio is a great place to find resources to help me acquire this knowledge of the structure of my target language. Also, since my language partner is a native speaker of Korean, she'll know best on how to clarify any lingering questions I may have from reading the textbooks.
I think that a reference grammar is really useful because it will help guide me on how to form a simple sentence in Korean. As a continue my studies, I can attempt to make more complex sentences, but it's good to know how to start small and build up from there.
